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She's still alive but in her mid nineties so I worry every time the phone rings with a certain prefix. I'll try to shorthand my situation: I was the scapegoat of the children with my older siblings her golden children, especially my sister who looks like her (unlike me) and was a housewife and mother (unlike me - in large part due to my mother sabotaging my efforts to do the same).



I was also the person who did everything for my mother starting in youth (she used me as her human shield against my father's blows.



I was her emotional support starting at age 12 when my father left to be with his mistress - my mother shared the gory details only with me making sure to threaten me with going to live with them if I wasn't there for her as she wanted.



I alone helped her with all (funeral etc) when my father died when I was 19, I helped her financially and generously - over helping myself and even as I was poor - over my lifetime.



I abandoned my life whenever she was dumped as the golden children got their lives together on holidays, her birthday, her surgery aftercare, and lastly her downsizing. (You can read some horrible tales when I did the two years of that.).



She was never there for me in any of my life travails, including hospitalizations, etc.



After all that when I, thanks to this forum and the internet teaching me to live my life, refused to be her free slave/caretaker any longer at age 62, she disinherited me from her will and removed me from being her executor etc. She didn't tell me these things though I suspected them from my sister's actions. When I asked both of them, they lied to me. I finally turned to her lawyer (an evil pig she paid to redo her will 6 times in a few years whenever things didn't go as she wanted), who emailed back with only: " you have no more responsibilities."



This spring my sister and her husband (multimillionaires many times over and greedy pigs) put the down payment on a condo in D.C. where they live. Then they moved my 94 year old mother who uses a walker for everything into it having her pay the mortgage payment and the $1,100 a month HOA to cover the pool, tennis court and gym my brother in law uses. My mother is fine with this, while she spent years guilting me for any small thing she did or gave me - which were rare to put it mildly. My mother is entirely dependent on them as she cannot go anywhere. They're not the caretaking types and use their wealth to have her food delivered. But my mother is in heaven as she's by her darlings now.



I made a final try to end our relationship on a good note, but have been met with a continuation of the emails she's sent me for years accusing me falsely of horrible things and putting me down.



My life is a bit of a shambles from all and I have health and financial concerns.



So if you survived reading all this - go or not go when she dies, assuming she predeceases me, which is not a given? (Sorry for any typos, I can't bear to proof read this, hence my thanks if you suffered through it.)

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marymary2,

You know what? You've got real problems and going by your responses here to not just me but others (I read things carefully and clearly you do not), you really don't want to help yourself. No, you'd rather remain the the victim of your mother and siblings because it means you can continue wallowing in self-pity and blaming them for why your life is miserable. As you state in your post they are living together and perfectly happy living their lives. You're not. That's on you, not them. You're an adult and in adulthood people get choices that they don't get in childhood or adolescence. One of those choices is how much power they're going to give others over their lives.
You will never get an apology from your mother. Neither will I or anyone else. You're not going to get any thanks for your years of caregiving either. No one does. So either not being thanked and victimhood becomes the rest of your life, or you seek out some help to stop letting it.
Please, read the posts carefully before commenting. I never suggested you go and say bad things about your mother at her funeral. Read that again.
Truly, if your mother and siblings really don't care about you at all, then write them the off. Have nothing to do with them. Seek out healthy relationships with people who do care about you. Like friends, other relatives, get in a romantic relationship. Why not?
There's no reason why you can't have all of these. You won't have any if you keep feeling sorry for yourself though.
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deblarue Jul 2022
BOOM! Straight, no chaser!!!
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Funerals are for the living, for those left behind to come together to remember and mourn the loss of someone they cared about. This doesn't sound like you and your relationship with your mother, so why would you go? What do you think you'll miss? What is it you'd like to do or say to others there (and this would NOT be the appropriate time/place to do it since their relationship with your Mother is much different)? What would be the point of going? Unless you intend to console your siblings and other people who cared about her, I'd stay away since it sounds like your relationship with her is already dead (or worse than dead since you say she's still inflicting pain).

Also, if she is to blame for all your woes, even as an adult, why do you care that you were removed from managing her legal responsibilities? Wouldn't that have been a moral/ethical/emotional conflict inside you? A hipocracy? Sounds like she was good at controlling her children through money. She has that control because that power is voluntarily given to her by her children.

"I made a final try to end our relationship on a good note, but have been met with a continuation of the emails she's sent me for years accusing me falsely of horrible things and putting me down" -- this is classic dementia behavior. Maybe you're not familiar with what dementia does to people? Maybe you don't spend enough time with your mother or aren't in the care communications loop to understand her decline? (Many adult children are in this position). If she was this way all her life, then dementia could conceivably ramp up that part of her since negativity is common in very senior people as it is. I have an Aunt who I grew up with and we love each other. She's now 100 and says the most hair-curling things to me, accusing me of heinous things. This is dementia.

We don't get to pick our birth families but we do get to choose if and how we engage with them. I'm so sorry that your relationship with your mother couldn't have been at least "not painful". May you gain clarity and wisdom and peace in your heart.
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marymary2 Jul 2022
Wow, a lot of accusations and assumptions from you that are wrong. She was tested for dementia when I worried about it once. She has none. As the Alzheimer's hotline told me when I called them too many times several years ago, "this has been her lifelong behavior of cruelty and it's just gotten worse with age. It's not dementia." Some like to dump any abusive behavior in an elder person as dementia. It's unhappily just not correct.
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I haven't spoken to my mother in 10 years, as with you, I was the scapegoat, the do all and get no thanks go to for my mother. My brother the golden child.

She was very clear to me, stating that she was not leaving me anything in her will, that was the last straw for me, it was not about the money, it was a slap in the face, basically saying that I did not matter to her.

Finally, I had enough, it was either her or me, I chose me! That is the day, to me, she died.

No, I will not attend her funeral, nor will her golden child, who now has turned into the golden goat as he is stuck with her and is not a happy camper.

Do what is best for you!
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marymary2 Jul 2022
Thank you Dolly. I'm so sorry that you were the scapegoat too. It's a hard and unrecognized agony - or as is popular to say a "disenfranchised grief." Wishing you all the best.
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The only way, in your situation, I may want to go to a funeral would be for closure. I would want to make sure the B***h was dead. Say goodbye to all the hurt she gave you because she will not be able to do it to you anymore. Then turn away from the coffin and walk out.

You never have to see these people again. You owe them nothing. If they do come after you for money, say sorry I don't have it, I gave most of it to Mom when she needed it.

Time to live ur life for you.
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marymary2 Jul 2022
Thank you for getting it, JoAnn29! It's about closure for me. Closure to the dream I always had of having a mother who wanted me, a mother who would care if I was alive or dead, a mother like the ones crammed in my face every day by the media perpetuating the myth of the all-caring mother.

They won't come after me for money. My siblings are all very wealthy and I have almost literally nothing. They know that and it has always given them pleasure. Any success or good in my life was met with displeasure and insults.
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Why would you go to the funeral of someone who was mean to you?
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marymary2 Jul 2022
For you and the others who ask this, you are so lucky to not understand. You had some love in your life. For others like me, it's our mother. From what I've read we're wired to feel a connection to that person regardless of how they treat us. I would like to get closure. I would like to say goodbye to her understanding what I could never get from her. In an ideal world, I would also get someone else to give me a bit of empathy for my loss, the way that everyone else does who suffers a death. I've suffered enough alone. Unlike you, I don't have a spouse or family or friends to give me succor. I get your point though so thanks for posting here.
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I'm not going to my MIL's funeral if she ever passes. She has 'uninvited' me several times, and I remained quiet until the last time when she said it and I responded "what ever made you think I planning to go?". She was shocked, for sure.

I'll deal with it when it happens. If DH needs my support, or I'm feeling super kind. But to sit through speeches that will extol her virtues when she was nothing but nasty to me would be very negative to me.

So many of us have such mixed feelings about family. It's truly sad. There is so much love in the world and some people just shove it away with all their strength.

I hope, whatever you decide, that it brings you some measure of peace.
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marymary2 Jul 2022
How horrible for her to do that to you. Your post did however make me realize I phrased my original question incorrectly. I would never sit through as you well put it "extolling her virtues". I just meant saying goodbye to her physical body and seeing her one last time, which I would happily do alone as someone above suggests.

Your advice is great and appreciated. Wishing you peace.
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Mary,

NO ONE is attacking you here. Least of all me. Sure, I've got problems. Who doesn't? I don't think there's a person in the world who never had or doesn't have some kind of problem or other.
I know what it's like to wallow in self-pity and victim mentality though because I did it for a long time. I also know how to get out it. I know how caregiving for an abusive, narcissistic bully can devastate a life. In fact, it almost ended mine.
Yes, this is a support forum and I gave you the best support and advice you're going to get because it's the truth. The ugliest truth is always better than the most beautiful lie.
You have to do everything in your power to drag yourself out of victimhood. It's no easy thing to do. It's ten times harder when there's no support system in person to help you get out of it because it's easy to wallow in self-pity. Blaming others for why your life is what it is becomes comfortable. The pain and misery become like a sort of friend. A companion of sorts, but it will use up your life. Choose joy and love.
The person who told me this lost everyone because of WWII. He even had to leave his country (Poland). He came to America, remarried, had another family, had a life. In fact, he loved life.
He loved life because he knew first-hand how fast life can just be gone. So he didn't live his life as a victim. He didn't live out the rest of his days in misery feeling sorry for himself either.
You don't have let victimhood and resentment win. You deserve to have a life with joy and love in it.
So choose joy and love.
Everyone has bad days when the pain of the past creeps in on us. All people who were ever caregivers to parent have felt resentment towards them. If we come from an abusive and dysfunctional upbrining like I did, it can make you feel like a victim too. We're only human and all of us have human emotions. It's okay to have them and to talk about it when you need to. You choose whether or not you're going to be a victim though. Don't be one. You deserve better than to let your mother and sibling make you their victim because then they win, and you lose.
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Evamar Jul 2022
BurntCaregiver,
You nailed it.
If somebody wants to remain a victim they will, no matter what.
I too knew few survivors of horrible events and some exhibited the most positive attitude towards life.
They know, changing people and events is not going to happen, but, embracing life with all the obstacles is crucial. Nobody will experience only the best in this life, most will tip the scale in other direction.
We let it go and begin something wonderful.
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Funerals are for the living; the souls of the dead are watching the happenings and seeing things through your eyes once they're gone, finally realizing what they've done and feeling how they made YOU feel all those years. That's what I believe anyway, just my 2 cents. That's 'karma' or 'hell' or whatever folks like to call it when we wind up 'paying for our behavior on earth after we die.' So, it's up to YOU how you handle your mother's funeral, and what you think will bring you the most closure after she passes.

No matter how dreadful a parent treated us during their lifetime, it's hard to bury them. I don't know of anyone who 'hands out cigars' at their mother's funeral, to be honest. There's relief in their passing, for a variety of reasons, but there also seems to STILL be lingering feelings afterward. No matter what we do or don't do for them during our lives, after death, there's still some unresolved business I think. For me it comes out in dreams. I did so much for my mother which she never felt to be 'enough' and reminded me of that fact continuously. So now that she's gone, while I suffer no guilt about it, there are still lingering feelings I'm having that I can't even really pinpoint, but that surface in my subconscious while I'm sleeping. Can't even remember the dreams, just waking up feeling odd and unhappy.

So my point, as jumbled as it is, is this: try to figure out what will give YOU the best feeling after the event is over, and do whatever that is. There's no easy answer, and no 'right' or 'wrong' b/c your The Bad Guy no matter what ANYWAY, in the eyes of the 'family'. So who cares? It's what YOU need to do that counts only. Right?

I'm sorry you (and so many of us) are in this dreadful position to begin with. I only pray to God our own children don't feel this way when it's our turn to die. That we caused them so much pain & heartache during their lives that they're here, at this juncture. Very sad.
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marymary2 Jul 2022
Thank you, Lealonnnie1. I'm so sorry you and others here and elsewhere have experienced it too. It's very hard and it's not understood or accepted by most in the world it seems. Your post is not jumbled to me - it's thoughtful and very very helpful.

I'm betting you treated your children differently than your mother treated you, so there will be a different result. I wanted children but my mother did all she could to sabotage that. In the end though it's a plus as I never wanted any child to go through what I did and I have no doubt my mother and siblings would have done the same to any children I would have had. xo
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Will it give you the closure you need? If so then go. You can always go and decide at the last minute. Sometimes that is when it really becomes clear. Maybe you could ask the funeral home for a private viewing before the actual ceremony. I did that when my sisters died. To be honest it did not help me at all but we are all different and if it helps you then go. I have no plans to go to my narc moms funeral but we will see when the time comes.
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marymary2 Jul 2022
What a great idea about getting a chance to say goodbye alone. Thank you, Kmjfree. If I get the chance, I think that would be worth a shot. I just want to see my mother, not the living others. So sorry for your losses and experience too. Wishing you the best.
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Do the thing which will bring you the most peace. And then move forward either way. I wish you healing
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marymary2 Jul 2022
Thank you, Daughterof1930. I'm working on the moving forward part. It's taking longer than I hoped to erase 64 (and continuing) years of my mother's abuse. Wishing you well.
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